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BTW Elon, That’s a Pic of the Moon

Photo: Elon Musk/Twitter

Elon Musk is an ambitious, confident man, and sometimes, yes, that leads him to do things like releasing an ill-advised EDM song, dancing uncouthly, and breaking his big truck. Today, it meant that he shot off a tweet in which he misidentified the moon as a planet.

Hot off the heels of some controversial tweets about Coachella “sucking” yesterday (“Was good maybe 5 or 6 years ago when you could wonder [sic] around & find great unknown bands), Musk tweeted a photo with the words “OCCUPY MARS” alongside an image of Mars, likely in response to increased coronavirus panic dominating the news. Except it wasn’t Mars … it was the moon. The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson chimed in with support that he was “all in,” seeming not to notice the mistake.

Musk did eventually reply to his own tweet with “Moon too,” in what is either a simple clarification or a half-hearted attempt to cover up his mistake — but it took him over an hour to do so, which is simply too long for someone who runs a company literally invested in taking people to the very moon in question. Not only that; “Occupy Mars” is a catchphrase of Musk’s company SpaceX, and they sell T-shirts with the same image featuring Mars (not Moon) on their website. But that’s just what happens when your mind works as quickly and nimbly as a space car racing to a faraway planet — sometimes you just hit the wrong one.

BTW Elon, That’s a Pic of the Moon